Analog SFF, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Chloe was transfixed. Was Pascal having a breakdown? A mentally unhinged navigator was a danger too horrible to contemplate. If his emotional state and that eerie detached voice were anything to go by—

  No, she had heard that voice before. Pascal was in half-sleep, and this stream of consciousness was—what? The emotional half of his brain, like the analytical half she had heard before? That old duality theory of the brain hemispheres had taken some knocks, but right now she believed it unreservedly.

  "...decades of this ... what's at the end? ... same as before ... should never have seen ... false hope ... this all my life will be? ... Chloe!” She froze at the word, hurled like an accusation. Had he noticed her?

  "Chloe, why? ... thought you cared ... thought you ... me ... stupid ... should have known ... my fault? Ohhhh...” He dissolved completely into sobbing moans, but his posture never slumped, his eyes never left their fixed line.

  Chloe slipped out and wouldn't let herself think of what she had witnessed until she was back in her cabin, standing in the dark. Then she had to think about it.

  It might have been two minutes, or twenty, before she turned on a light and found something to write with. She always liked to sketch out a story before she committed it to video files, and this one would need more than usual.

  Much of her thesis was unchanged. People needed to know what Shastri and his band had done, how they had gone around the Exploratory Commission they were supposed to be serving, how their colony was tapping the pool of navigators to this day. Given that set of facts, the response was in little doubt.

  That was why she had to deliver more than those facts. That was why the navigators needed an outside advocate to plead their case. They needed her.

  This wasn't how she did business. She prided herself on letting facts speak for themselves, even when she went in expecting, even hoping, they would speak a certain way. She knew plenty of agenda journalists, and was glad at how few media critics counted her among them.

  That was about to end. All she could do to mitigate it was to be honest about taking sides, and bend every effort to lay out everything that mattered in the story, even the parts that could hurt the navigators’ cause.

  With all the evidence before the public and the authorities, there could be deliberation, rather than a foregone verdict. The navigators would have a chance to preserve what they had built. The rest of humanity would have a chance to regain some of what they had been denied for four decades. There might even be a solution that satisfied everyone. Stranger things had happened, and Chloe hoped it could happen here.

  She was still betraying her word to Zhang. Chloe had come to terms with that the day of Shastri's funeral. What she hoped to soften was her betrayal of the man on the bridge.

  Chloe would tell him her plan in the morning, in hopes that he would help her with it. If he scorned her offer, she wouldn't blame him. He had had his hope for the future ripped away, along with whatever trust, or more, he'd had in her. She wasn't going to get that trust back. Maybe, though, she could give him back his future.

  That would have to be enough.

  Copyright © 2006 Shane Tourtellotte

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  ROLLBACK: PART II OF IV by Robert J. Sawyer

  Actually getting something you've always wished for but never expected can be fraught with complications.

  THE STORY SO FAR:

  The year is 2048. Sarah and Donald Halifax, both eighty-seven, are celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary with their children and grandchildren at their Toronto home. Don is melancholy: he knows that this is the last milestone anniversary he and Sarah will be around for; their lives were good and full, but now are drawing to a close.

  Back in 2009, Sarah, then a professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto, had decoded the only radio transmission from another star ever detected by the SETI project—a message from Sigma Draconis, 18.8 light-years away—and she orchestrated Earth's reply to that message. A phone call comes during the anniversary party. As the astonished Sarah relays to her family: “The aliens from Sigma Draconis have responded to the radio message my team sent all those years ago."

  Incredibly, though, the new message is encrypted—scrambled so that it can't be read without a decryption key. It's baffling: the whole point of SETI is to send messages that will be easy to read; the notion that a message would be designed not to be read makes no sense to Sarah.

  The media begin inundating Sarah with phone calls—everyone wants to know what “the Grand Old Woman of SETI” makes of this; Sarah ignores the calls. But she's intrigued when a humanoid robot shows up at her door. Sarah has often said that SETI depends on the kindness of strangers, and one of the most generous of those strangers has been Cody McGavin, the billionaire founder of McGavin Robotics. He's sent this robot, carrying a cell phone, because he wants to talk to Sarah. She accepts his call, and he says he's got a proposal for her, and wants to fly her and Don down to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his company is headquartered.

  Astonished, Sarah agrees, and she and Don meet with McGavin in his office. Sarah, according to McGavin, is the key to communicating with the aliens. Four decades ago, she was the one who figured out what the aliens were asking in their original message, and he's sure that she'll be pivotal in cracking the current one.

  As McGavin says, “Planets don't talk to each other. People do. Some specific person on Sigma Draconis II sent the message, and one specific person on this planet—you, Dr. Sarah Halifax—figured out what he'd asked for, and organized our reply. You've got a pen pal, Dr. Halifax. It happens that I, not you, pay the postage, but he's your pen pal."

  And so, McGavin says, Sarah needs to be around for subsequent exchanges of messages, even though, because of the speed-of-light time lag, decades will elapse between each one.

  Don thinks McGavin is being both ridiculous and cruel, and tells him so: he and Sarah both know that they have only a few years of life left.

  Maybe not, says McGavin. He offers to pay for a rollback for Sarah: a new technique that can rejuvenate a person. It costs billions, but it'll return Sarah to being physically in her mid-twenties, giving her many decades of additional life to continue the dialogue with the aliens.

  Sarah is startled but intrigued. But she immediately sets out one nonnegotiable condition: McGavin must also pay for a rollback for her husband Don. McGavin initially balks—Don was an audio engineer and producer for CBC Radio before he retired; he's of no use to the SETI effort, and the process is supremely expensive. But the rich man relents, and, after considerable soul-searching, Sarah and Don agree to undergo the procedure.

  Tragically, though, the procedure works for Don, but not for Sarah. Rejuvenex, the company that performed the treatment, thinks the failure of Sarah to become young again may be related to experimental therapies she underwent decades previously for breast cancer—but regardless of the cause, there's nothing they can do. Although it'll take months for Don's rolling back to complete, it's inexorable: he's going to end up being physically in his mid-twenties, while Sarah will remain in her late eighties.

  The current message from Sigma Draconis remains unreadable, locked behind an encryption algorithm that the aliens have clearly explained in a header to their message but to which they've failed to provide the decryption key.

  In trying to figure out what that key might be—and to keep her mind off the growing age gap between her and her husband—Sarah spends a lot of time contemplating the first message from Sigma Draconis, received way back in 2009. In it, the aliens established that although it's technically correct to write the result of the question “What is eight divided by twelve?” as either 2/3 or 4/6, the answer 2/3 is preferable (because the fraction has been reduced). They also established that whether the number one is or isn't a prime number is a matter of opinion. This mathematical vocabulary allowed them to explore moral issues in the rest of their message. Sarah vividly recalls the fateful day all those years ago when s
he finally figured out exactly what the first message was, and what sort of reply the aliens wanted...

  * * * *

  Chapter 13

  To be young again! So many had wished for it over the years, but Donald Halifax had achieved it—and it felt wonderful. He knew his strength and stamina had ebbed these past several decades, but because it'd happened gradually he hadn't been conscious of how much he'd lost. But it had all come rushing back over the last six months, and the contrast was staggering; it was like being on a caffeine jag all the time. The term that came to mind was “vim and vigor"—and, although he'd played “vim” often enough in Scrabble, he realized he didn't actually know precisely what it meant, so he asked his datacom. “Ebullient vitality and energy,” it told him.

  And that was it! That was precisely it! His energy seemed almost boundless, and he was elated to have it back. “Zest,” another word only ever employed on the Scrabble board, came to mind, too. The datacom's synonyms for it—keen relish, hearty enjoyment, gusto—were all applicable, but the cliché “feeling like a million bucks” seemed woefully inadequate; he felt like every one of the billions of dollars that had been spent on him; he felt totally, joyously, happily alive. He didn't shuffle anymore; he strode. Just walking along felt like the way he used to feel on those motorized walkways at airports—like he was bionic, moving so fast that it'd all be a blur to onlookers. He could lift heavy boxes, jump over puddles, practically fly up staircases—it wasn't quite leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but it felt damn near as good.

  And there was icing on this delicious cake: the constant background of pain that had been with him for so long was gone; it was as though he'd been sitting next to a roaring jet engine for years on end, always trying to shut out the sound, to ignore it, and now it had been turned off; the silence was intoxicating. Youth, the old song said, was wasted on the young. So true—because they didn't know what it would feel like once it was gone. But now he had it again!

  Dr. Petra Jones confirmed that his rollback was complete. His cell-division rate, she said, had slowed to normal and his telomeres had gone back to shortening with each division, a new set of growth rings was starting to appear in his bones, and so on. And the follow-up work had been completed, too. He had new lenses, a new kidney, and a new prostate, all grown from his own cells; his nose was restored to the merely honker-esque proportions it'd had in his youth; his ears had been reduced; his teeth had been whitened and his two remaining amalgam fillings replaced; and a few nips and tucks had tidied up other things. For all intents and purposes, he was physically twenty-five once more, and aging forward normally from that point.

  Don was still getting used to all the wonderful improvements. His hearing was top-notch again, as was his vision. But he'd had to buy a whole new wardrobe. After the recalcification treatments and gene therapies, he'd regained the two inches he'd lost over the years, and his limbs, which had been reduced to not much more than skin and bones, had beefed up nicely. Ah, well; his collection of cardigans and shirts with buttons would have looked silly on a guy apparently in his twenties.

  He'd had to stop wearing his wedding ring, too. A decade ago, he'd had it reduced in size, since his fingers had gotten thinner with age; now, it pinched painfully. He'd been waiting until the rollback was over to get it sized back up, and he'd get it done as soon as he found a good jeweler; he didn't want to trust it to just anyone.

  Ontario had mandatory driver re-testing every two years starting at one's eightieth birthday. Don had failed the last time. He hadn't missed it, and, besides, Sarah was still able to drive when they really needed to go somewhere. Now, though, he probably should take the test again; he had no doubt he'd pass this time.

  At some point, he'd also have to get a new passport, with his new face, and new credit cards, also with his new face. Technically, he'd still be entitled to seniors’ discounts in restaurants and at movies, but there'd be no way to claim them without convincing incredulous waiters and clerks. Too bad, really. Unlike, he was sure, every other person who had undergone a rollback, he really could use the break.

  Despite all the good things, there were a few downsides to being young again. Sarah and Don were spending double on groceries now. And Don slept more. For at least ten years, he and Sarah had been doing just fine with six hours’ sleep each night, but he found he needed a full eight again. It was a small price to pay: losing two hours a day, but gaining an extra sixty years. And, besides, presumably as he aged the second time, his sleep and food requirements would lessen again.

  It was now a little after 11:00 P.M., and Don was getting ready for bed. Usually, he was quick in the bathroom, but he'd gone out today, and it had been hot and muggy. Toronto in August had been unpleasant when he'd been a kid; these days, the heat and humidity were brutal. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep well if he didn't first have a quick shower. Carl had installed one of those diagonal support bars for them several years ago. Sarah still needed it, but Don now found it got in the way.

  He shampooed, quite enjoying the sensation. He now had a full head of inch-long sandy-brown hair, and he just loved the feel of it. His chest hair was no longer white either, and his other body hair had lost its grayness.

  The shower was sensuous, and he luxuriated in it. And, as he cleaned himself down there, he felt his penis growing a little stiff. As the water ran over him, he idly stroked himself. He was thinking of finishing himself off—that seemed the most expedient course—when Sarah entered the bathroom. He could see her through the translucent shower curtain; she was doing something over by the sink. He rinsed the soap off, his erection fading as he did so. Then he turned off the water, pulled back the shower curtain, and stepped out of the tub. He was used by now to being able to swing his legs one after the other over the side without it being painful, and without—as he'd been doing in the preceding few years—sitting on the edge of the tub while doing so.

  Her back was to him. She was already dressed for bed, wearing, as she always did in summers, a long, loose red T-shirt. He grabbed a towel from the rack and vigorously dried himself off, then headed down the short corridor to the bedroom. He'd always been a pajama man, but he lay naked on top of the green sheets, looking up at the ceiling. After a moment, though, he felt cold—their house had central air-conditioning, and an outlet vent was directly above the bed—and so he scurried under the sheets.

  A moment later, Sarah entered. She turned off the light as she did so, but there was enough illumination seeping in from outside that he could see her moving slowly to her side of the bed, and he felt the mattress compressing as she climbed in. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said.

  He rolled over on his side, and touched her shoulder. Sarah seemed surprised by the contact—for the last decade or so, they'd had to plan sex in advance, since Don had needed to take a pill beforehand to kick-start his lower regions—but soon he felt her hand gently on his hip. He moved closer to her and brought his head down to kiss her. She responded after a moment, and they kissed for about ten seconds. When he pulled away, she was lying on her back, and he was looking down at her while leaning on one elbow.

  "Hey,” she said, her voice soft.

  "Hey, yourself,” he said, smiling.

  He wanted to bounce off the walls, to have wild, athletic sex—but she wouldn't be able to stand that, and so he touched her gently, softly, and—

  "Ouch!” she said.

  He wasn't sure what he'd done, but he said, “Sorry.” He made his touch even lighter, more feathery. He heard her make a sharp intake of breath, but he couldn't tell if it was in pain or pleasure. He shifted positions again, and she moved slightly, and he actually heard her bones creak.

  The activity was so slow, and her touch so weak, that he felt himself going soft. While looking into her eyes he vigorously stroked himself, trying to get his erection back. She looked so vulnerable; he didn't want her to think he was rejecting her.

  "Tell me if this hurts,” he said as he climbed on top of he
r, making sure that his own arms and legs were bearing almost all his weight; he wasn't the least bit fat, but he was still much heavier than he'd been before the rollback. He maneuvered carefully, gently, looking for a sweet compromise between what his body was now capable of and what hers could endure. But after only a single thrust, one that seemed oh-so-gentle to him, he could see the pain on her face, and he quickly withdrew, rolling onto his back on her side of the bed.

  "I'm so sorry,” she said, softly.

  "No, no,” he said. “It's fine.” He turned onto his side, facing her, and very gently held her in his arms.

  * * * *

  Chapter 14

  Sarah had leapt from her chair in the basement on that fateful night all those years ago, and Don had hugged her, and lifted her up so that her feet weren't touching the ground, and he'd swung her around, and he kissed her hard, right there, in front of the kids.

  "My wife the genius!” Don declared, grinning from ear to ear.

  "More like your wife the plodding researcher,” replied Sarah, but she was laughing as she said it.

  "No, no, no,” he said. “You figured it out—before anyone else did, you figured out the meat of the message."

  "I've got to post something about this,” she said. “I mean, it's no damn good if I keep it a secret. Whoever announces this publicly first is the one who..."

  "Whose name will be in the history books,” he said. “I am so proud of you."

  "Thanks, darling."

  "But you're right,” he said. “You should post something, right now.” He let her go, and she started to move back to the computer.

  "No, Mom,” said Carl. “Let me.” Sarah was a hunt-and-peck typist, and not a very fast one. Her father, back in Edmonton, had never understood her wanting to be a scientist, and had encouraged her to take all the typing she could so she'd be ready for a secretarial career. A single typing course had been mandatory. It was the one class in her whole life that Sarah had failed.

  She looked at her teenage son, who clearly, in his own way, wanted to share in this moment. “Dictate what you want to say,” Carl said. “I'll type it in."