In the eyes of an outside observer, the star’s glow dimmed as each shell was constructed. I have succeeded in darkening a sun just as my mother had, albeit at a much grander scale.
There is always a technical solution.
117,649
HISTORY FLOWS LIKE a flash flood in the desert: the water pouring across the parched earth, eddying around rocks and cacti, pooling in depressions, seeking a channel while it’s carving the landscape, each chance event shaping what comes after.
There are more ways to rescue lives and redeem what might have been than Abby and others believe.
In the grand matrix of my matrioshka brain, versions of our history are replayed. There isn’t a single world in this grand computation, but billions, each of them populated by human consciousnesses, but nudged in small ways to be better.
Most paths lead to less slaughter. Here, Rome and Constantinople are not sacked; there, Cuzco and Vĩnh Long do not fall. Along one timeline, the Mongols and Manchus do not sweep across East Asia; along another, the Westphalian model does not become an all-consuming blueprint for the world. One group of men consumed with murder do not come to power in Europe, and another group worshipping death do not seize the machinery of state in Japan. Instead of the colonial yoke, the inhabitants of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia decide their own fates. Enslavement and genocide are not the handmaidens of discovery and exploration, and the errors of our history are averted.
Small populations do not rise to consume a disproportionate amount of the planet’s resources or monopolize the path of its future. History is redeemed.
But not all paths are better. There is a darkness in human nature that makes certain conflicts irreconcilable. I grieve for the lives lost, but I can’t intervene. These are not simulations. They cannot be if I respect the sanctity of human life.
The billions of consciousnesses who live in these worlds are every bit as real as me. They deserve as much free will as anyone who has ever lived and must be allowed to make their own choices. Even if we’ve always suspected that we also live in a grand simulation, we prefer the truth to be otherwise.
Think of these as parallel universes if you will; call them sentimental gestures of a woman looking into the past; dismiss it as a kind of symbolic atonement.
But isn’t it the dream of every species to have the chance to do it over? To see if it’s possible to prevent the fall from grace that darkens our gaze upon the stars?
823,543
THERE IS A message.
Someone has plucked the strings that weave together the fabric of space, sending a sequence of pulses down every strand of Indra’s web, connecting the farthest exploding nova to the nearest dancing quark.
The galaxy vibrates with a broadcast in languages known and yet to be invented. I parse out a single sentence.
Come to the galactic center. It’s reunion time.
Carefully, I instruct the intelligences guiding the plates that make up the Dyson swarms to shift, like ailerons on the wings of ancient aircraft. The plates drift apart, as though the shells in the matrioshka brain are cracking, hatching a new form of life.
Gradually, the statites move into the configuration of a Shkadov thruster. A single eye opens in the universe, emitting a bright beam of light.
And slowly, the imbalance in the solar radiation begins to move the star, bringing the shell-mirrors with it. We’re headed for the center of the galaxy, propelled upon a fiery column of light.
Not every human world will heed the call. There are plenty of worlds on which the inhabitants have decided that it is perfectly fine to explore the mathematical worlds of ever-deepening virtual reality, to live out lives of minimal energy consumption in universes hidden within nutshells.
Some, like my daughter Abby, will prefer to leave their lush, life-filled planets in place, like oases in the endless desert that was space. Others will seek the refuge of the galactic edge, where cooler climates will allow more efficient computation. Still others, having re-captured the ancient joy of living in the flesh, will tarry to play out space operas of conquest and glory.
But enough will come.
I imagine thousands, hundreds of thousands of stars moving toward the center of the galaxy. Some of them inhabited by people who still look like people, others by machines that have but a dim memory of their ancestral form. Some will drag with them planets populated by creatures from our distant past, others by creatures I have never seen. Some will bring guests, aliens who do not share our history but are curious about this self-replicating low-entropy phenomenon that calls itself humanity.
I imagine generations of children watching the night sky as the constellations shift and transform, as the stars move out of alignment, drawing contrails against the empyrean.
I close my eyes. The journey will take a long time. Might as well get some rest.
A VERY, VERY long time later:
The wide silvery lawn spreads out before me almost to the golden surf of the sea, separated by the narrow dark band that was the beach. The sun is bright and warm, and I can almost feel the breeze, a gentle caress against my arms and face.
“Mia!”
I look over and see Mom striding across the lawn, her long black hair streaming like a kite’s tails. She wraps me in a fierce hug, squeezing my face against hers. She smells like the glow of new stars being born in the embers of a supernova, like new comets just emerging from the primeval nebula.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, her voice muffled against my cheek.
“It’s okay,” I say, and I mean it. I give her a kiss.
“It’s a good day to fly a kite,” she says.
We look up at the sun.
The perspective shifts vertiginously, and now we’re standing upside down on an intricately carved plain, the sun far below us. Gravity tethers the surface above the bottoms of our feet to that fiery orb, stronger than any string. The bright photons we’re bathed in strike against the ground, pushing it up. We’re standing on the bottom of a kite that is flying higher and higher, tugging us toward the stars.
I want to tell her that I understand her impulse to make one life grand, her need to dim the sun with her love, her striving to solve intractable problems, her faith in a technical solution even though she knew it was imperfect. I want to tell her that I know we’re flawed, but that doesn’t mean we’re not also wondrous.
Instead, I just squeeze her hand; she squeezes back.
“Happy birthday,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to fly.”
I relax my grip, and smile at her. “I’m not. We’re almost there.”
The world brightens with the light of a million billion suns.
Charlie is the author of L.A. Times Bestseller All the Birds in the Sky. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and several anthologies. Her work has won a Hugo Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Emperor Norton Award for ‘extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.’
allthebirdsinthesky.tumblr.com
Stephen is one of the most important science fiction writers to emerge from Britain in the past thirty years. His ‘Xeelee’ sequence of novels and short stories is arguably the most significant work of future history in modern science fiction. He is the author of more than fifty books and over 100 short stories. His most recent books are The Long Cosmos, fifth in a series of novels co-written with Terry Pratchett, The Medusa Chronicles (co-written with Alastair Reynolds), and novella Project Clio.
www.stephen-baxter.com
Gregory is the author of more than twenty novels, including Jupiter Project, Artifact, Against Infinity, Eater, and Timescape. A two-time winner of the Nebula Award, Benford has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the Ditmar Award, the Lord Foundation Award for achievement in the sciences, and the United Nations Medal in Literature. Many of his best known novels are part of a
six-novel Galactic Center sequence, In the Ocean of Night, Across the Sea of Suns, Great Sky River, Tides of Light, Furious Gulf, and Sailing Bright Eternity. His most recent novels are Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar, both co-written with Larry Niven. A retrospective of his short fiction, The Best of Gregory Benford, was published last year.
www.gregorybenford.com
Called ‘Violent, poetic and compulsively readable’ by Maclean’s, Tobias is a New York Times Bestselling writer born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, and the islands he lived on influence much of his work. His Xenowealth series begins with Crystal Rain. Along with other stand-alone novels and his over 50 stories, his works have been translated into 18 different languages. He has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. His latest novel is Hurricane Fever, a follow up to the successful Arctic Rising that NPR says will ‘give you the shivers.’ He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs.
www.tobiasbuckell.com
Pat is the author of about a hundred short stories and fourteen books, two of which, Synners and Fools, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Her story “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, originally published in Edge of Infinity, won the Hugo Award in 2013. She was born in New York, grew up in Massachusetts, and spent most of her adult life in the Kansas City area. She now lives in London with her husband, the Original Chris Fowler, her Polish translator Konrad Walewski and his partner, the Lovely Lena, and co-conspirator, writer and raconteuse Amanda Hemingway; also, two ghosts, one of which is the shade of Miss Kitty Calgary, Queen of the Cats (the other declines to give a name). She is pretty sure there isn’t a more entertaining household. She is currently working on new novels See You When You Get There and Reality Used to be a Friend of Mine.
patcadigan.wordpress.com
Paul is a PhD physicist and a senior scientist at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s museum of science, art, and human perception. He has written many nonfiction science books, including the Explorabook, which sold over a million copies. With Pat Murphy, he writes a science column for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has been the ‘talent’ in television programs from around the world including broadcasting from the rim of an active volcano in Antarctica, and is the winner of the Faraday Award for Excellence in Science Teaching from the National Science Teachers Association. Doherty was recently hired by the Dalai Lama to bring hands-on science education to Tibetans in exile in India. He is an adventurer who has worked as a scientist/writer at McMurdo station Antarctica where he joined in the culture of scientists doing research in an extreme environment. He has also done multi-day ski tours north of the Arctic Circle. Though he is a long-time science fiction reader, this is his first published science fiction story.
www.exo.net/~pauld
Thoraiya is an Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning, Sydney-based science fiction writer and lapsed veterinarian. Her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Cosmos, Analog and a number of anthologies. Her most recent book is short story collection, Asymmetry. Her first novel, Crossroads of Canopy, a big fat fantasy set in a magical rainforest, is forthcoming from Tor in January 2017.
www.thoraiyadyer.com
Ken is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He also translated the Hugo-winning novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin. Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy, is a finalist for the Nebula Award and the winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Sequel The Wall of Storms is due later this year. His debut short story collection in English, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, was published in March 2016. Coming up is the second ‘Dandelion Dynasty’ novel, The Wall of Storms. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
kenliu.name
Barbadian author, editor and research consultant Karen is known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the Frank Collymore Literary Award, Carl Brandon Parallax Award, William L. Crawford Award, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the Kitschies Golden Tentacle, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards. Its sequel, The Galaxy Game, was published in January 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.
karenlord.wordpress.com
Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel Warchild won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both Warchild and her third novel Cagebird were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Cagebird won the Prix Aurora Award and the Spectrum Award in 2006. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by Julie Czerneda, Nalo Hopkinson, John Joseph Adams and Ann VanderMeer. Her fantasy novel, The Gaslight Dogs, was published through Orbit Books USA.
www.karinlowachee.com
Pat has won numerous awards for her thoughtful, literary science fiction and fantasy writing, including two Nebula Awards, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Seiun Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Her novels include The Falling Woman, The City Not Long After, Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles, Wild Angel, and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell. She has published many short stories, which are collected in Points of Departure and Women Up To No Good. In 1991, Pat co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender roles. This award harnesses the power of chocolate chip cookies in an on-going effort to change the world. In addition to writing science fiction, Pat writes about science for adults and children and makes strange devices from LEGO bricks and folded paper. Currently, she is employed as Activity Guru/Evil Genius at Mystery Science (mysteryscience.com), a web-based elementary-school curriculum designed to inspire kids (and their teachers) to love science.
www.brazenhussies.net/murphy
Larry began freelance writing in 1964, the year of his first short fiction publication, “The Coldest Place”, in If. He won his first Hugo in 1967 for “Neutron Star”. His other Hugo winners are “Inconstant Moon”, “The Hole Man”, and “The Borderland of Sol”. First novel World of Ptavvs began his Known Space future history. Ringworld won both the Hugo and Nebula and was followed by The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld’s Children. His other solo novels include A Gift from Earth, Protector, A World Out of Time, The Magic Goes Away, The Smoke Ring, The Integral Trees, Destiny’s Road, and Rainbow Mars. A frequent collaborator, Niven has written novels with Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Michael F. Flynn, Edward M. Lerner, David Gerrold, Brenda Cooper, and Gregory Benford. His short fiction is collected in more than 20 collections, including Neutron Star, All the Myriads Ways, Inconstant Moon, A Hole in Space, N-Space, Playgrounds of the Mind, The Draco Tavern, and The Best of Larry Niven. He is an SFWA Grand Master and has won a Heinlein Award and a Hubbard Award for Lifetime Achievement. He lives in Southern California with wife Marilyn.
www.larryniven.net
An is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chainmail out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and a handful of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between.
an.owomoyela.net
Robert was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He has a Bachelor of Science in Bi
ology from the Nebraska Wesleyan University, and has worked as a lab technician. He became a full-time writer in 1987, the same year he won the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and has published twelve novels, including The Leeshore, The Hormone Jungle, and far future SF Marrow and The Well of Stars. A prolific writer, Reed has published over 200 short stories, mostly in F&SF and Asimov’s, which have been nominated for the Hugo, James Tiptree, Jr., Locus, Nebula, Seiun, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and World Fantasy awards, and have been collected in The Dragons of Springplace, The Cuckoo’s Boys, Eater-of-Bone, and The Greatship. His novella A Billion Eves won the Hugo Award. His latest book is major SF novel The Memory of Sky. Nebraska’s only SF writer, Reed lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter, and is an ardent long-distance runner.
www.robertreedwriter.com
Alastair was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He has lived in Cornwall, Scotland, the Netherlands, where he spent twelve years working as a scientist for the European Space Agency, before returning to Wales in 2008 where he lives with his wife Josette. Reynolds has been publishing short fiction since his first sale to Interzone in 1990. Since 2000 he has published thirteen novels: the Inhibitor trilogy, British Science Fiction Association Award winner Chasm City, Century Rain, Pushing Ice, The Prefect, House of Suns, Terminal World, and first in the Poseidon’s Children series, Blue Remembered Earth. His most recent novels are the Poseidon’s Children trilogy, Doctor Who novel The Harvest of Time, and The Medusa Chronicles (co-written with Stephen Baxter). His short fiction has been collected in Zima Blue and Other Stories, Galactic North, Deep Navigation, and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds. Coming up is a new novel, Revenger. In his spare time he rides horses.
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