Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories

by Caroline M. Yoachim

  a robot programmed

  to prepare for this spring day

  our joyous new home

  The robot described in the poem was standing in a wall alcove. She wondered if it was a special creation of Andrew’s or a standard household appliance. It had a generic humanoid appearance, with facial features that looked like no one in particular. The designers had opted to make it silver, rather than flesh colored. It matched the stainless steel appliances, which she suspected were selected to match the time period she’d left, rather than whatever the modern fashion happened to be.

  She heard the soft whir of the time machine behind her, and closed her eyes. Would the shift in the timeline be instantaneous, or would she feel the pain of her death before she dissolved into nothingness? She waited, but the end didn’t come.

  “Our timeline starts from the assumption that I go back to save you. I can’t stop myself, even if you ask me to,” Andrew said. “But we can have a little more time together, here in the future, or back somewhere in our past if you’d rather.”

  Andrew stepped out of the time machine mere moments after she did, but he had aged. He must have stayed in the past years after she’d left, and she still existed. Which meant he hadn’t destroyed the time machine, and he probably never would.

  He took her hand, an excited grin on his face. “Wait until you see the library I set up in here.”

  The condo had two bedrooms, and he’d converted one of them into a maze of books. Shelves all around the walls, even up above the door. Rows of shelves in the middle of the room, with barely enough room to walk around them. Shelves underneath the cushioned nook that was built in underneath the window. Every shelf was packed with books.

  “Paper fell out of favor,” he said, “but I knew you’d miss your friends.”

  She ran her fingertips over the spines of the books. It was an eclectic collection with a little bit of everything, literary classics, science fiction, mysteries, romance. Nonfiction travel books and assorted science texts. Poetry. It was beautiful.

  “Thank you.”

  They held hands and walked on the beach, watching teenagers fly around recklessly on motorized kites before splash-landing into the ice cold ocean. Nicole worried about them at first, but they all wore protective wetsuits and emerged from the ocean unscathed. Andrew eventually pointed out robots at even intervals along the beach.

  “Probably lifeguards,” he said.

  Robots, it turned out, were everywhere. There were shops manned by robots, shuttle buses that drove themselves, even hospitals and schools with no sign of any humans. Nicole wanted to ask someone about it, but the only people she ever saw were the teenagers on the beach, and they were too busy fly-diving for her to get anywhere near them.

  Nicole approached one of the lifeguard robots. “Where are all the people?”

  “There are 57 people currently using this section of beach,” the robot responded.

  “Not here, specifically,” Andrew clarified. “Historically, there were people doing tasks that robots do now. Why are there so few people?”

  “We are programmed as caretakers for those who remain,” the robot explained. “Most people have moved on.”

  “But are there any people left?”

  “I only have data for this section of beach,” the robot said. “Fifty-five entertainment bodies rented via Central 3, and two independent units.”

  Nicole figured there’d been some sort of singularity event, like she was always reading about in science fiction novels. After a while, she and Andrew got used to the robots and came to appreciate the privacy. It was a calm, peaceful life, and she was happy. But every morning she looked at the time machine and wondered—was tomorrow the day he would go back? Was today the day she should destroy the machine?

  She knew what she needed to do, but she kept putting it off. There was no harm to one more day, a little more time. One more book to read. One more of Andrew’s poems. One more walk on the beach.

  Then one day it was too late.

  She was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and he stood next to the time machine. “I have to go now, while I’m still strong enough to carry you over the aisle.”

  And with no more goodbye than that, he stepped into the time machine and disappeared. She had waited too long and missed her chance, and now her paradise would be her prison, and she would be alone with only books and robots until she died.

  DEATH

  Rock crushes scissors.

  Test: Nicole programs the time machine to pull Andrew out of the past before he is crushed.

  Result: Unknown.

  Probability of timeline collapse: 0.01%

  Probability of death, Nicole: 1.48%

  Probability of death, Andrew: 50%

  An army of helpful robots and a roomful of books went a long way toward solving a time travel problem, but even with all the resources of the future, she couldn’t come up with a perfect result. Even odds was the best solution she’d found, and the time had come to try.

  The only way she’d come up with to use the time machine remotely was to send a piece of the machine back in time. Andrew had created some kind of bond between all the parts, and the machine would reach out into the past to try to bring itself back together.

  Nicole searched for something she could use to hide a piece of the time machine, and eventually she found an antique wristwatch at a pawn shop. After the accident, Andrew had given her a pair of red-handled scissors, and she’d given him a watch that had mysteriously appeared in her jacket pocket. This watch. Their younger selves assumed that Andrew had tucked it into her pocket as he pushed her out of harm’s way, but perhaps that wasn’t what really happened.

  Nicole took the watch home and pried open the back. She removed a case screw from the watch, and replaced it with one of the tiny screws that held the modified CZT detectors to the time machine’s circuit board.

  With a piece missing, using the time machine would be dangerous. Nicole didn’t have to worry about it when she went back, because she’d be wearing the watch. After that, though, anyone attempting to arrive in this section of the timeline might partially recohere on the missing piece, spread too thin across time to ever come back together. It would be dangerous until Andrew came back with the watch, the missing screw.

  The watch was loose on her wrist, and she pushed it halfway up her forearm to make sure it wouldn’t slip off. At the last moment, she remembered the red-handled scissors. She needed to return them to the past so her younger self could hurl them out into the grass for Andrew to find. She traveled back to when Andrew and both her younger selves were at Beacon Rock. While the house was empty, she snuck the scissors back into their drawer.

  Then she went all the way back to the beginning and arrived at Andrew’s apartment a few minutes after the two of him had gone to catch the bus.

  Rock crushes love. Nicole arrived at the bus station shortly before it was time to board and cut to the front of the line, determined to be the first person onto the bus. Her age worked to her advantage, because the younger passengers didn’t have the heart to tell an old lady to move to the back of the line. Enough time had passed since Andrew left that she was confident he wouldn’t recognize her, leaning heavily on her cane and wearing thick glasses. Even so, she had dressed all in pink and worn a wide floppy hat. She hated pink.

  She made her way to the back of the bus, ignoring the driver’s suggestion that she might be more comfortable in the front. “I like to be close to the ladies’ room,” she told him. She picked a seat where she’d be able to see the accident.

  Out the window, Andrew was talking to his younger self as they stood in line. Young Andrew was listening, but he was clearly distracted by the impossibly young Nicole that was in front of them in line. She could jump across time, but never again would she be that young. It seemed like more than a single lifetime ago that she met Andrew and created this convoluted mess in their timelines.

  But maybe she could fix it.
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br />   Nicole watched Andrew steal the scissors out of her younger self’s knitting bag. She watched him stare at the time on his watch, identical to the one she wore on her own wrist. He had no idea that the watch held a piece of the time machine. He waited for exactly the right moment. He picked Nicole up and pushed her across the aisle into the arms of his youth. That was the moment. She stopped the hands on her watch to record the time.

  There was an odd hum from her watch, a vibration that gradually increased in intensity. She worried that the time machine was trying to pull her back into the future, but Andrew was staring at his watch too. He was supposed to take it off and slip it into Nicole’s pocket, and his curiosity turned to panic as he realized he had deviated from the plan.

  Outside, the boulder broke free. It was oblong and gray and the size of a minivan, and it seemed to hang for a moment, teetering on the face of the cliff before crashing down through the roof of the bus.

  She stared at the wall of rock where Andrew had been.

  When the machine pulled at its missing piece, there was an equal chance that it would pull her back instead of Andrew. Fifty-fifty. Even odds. Two watches, two pieces of the machine, only one chance to get it right.

  The crucial moment had passed, and she was still on the bus. She prayed that she’d done everything right, that Andrew was safely in the future, and not crushed underneath the rock.

  The younger version of herself embraced the younger Andrew.

  In the confusion after the accident, she slipped the watch off her wrist and into her younger self’s jacket pocket.

  She’d left a note for Andrew in the future, explaining what she’d done. If he lived, he would see it, and maybe he would figure out some way to bring her forward, too. They could join the singularity and transcend together beyond these tangled loops of time.

  And if he couldn’t find a way to bring her forward? Well, it would take years, but she would wait for the youngest Andrew to build the time machine, and then she could send herself back into their future.

  She watched their younger selves get into a car and drive away, and then she felt it, the tug of the future.

  Love conquers death.

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHIPS

  Kaimu dug his skis into the snow and forced himself onto the steeper slope along the edge of the run. Michelle was behind him, and there wasn’t far to go. He was going to win.

  A white-furred creature stirred at the sound of his approach. It rose up from the snow and stared, paralyzed, directly in his path.

  The safety mechanism on his skis activated, but it was too late to turn. Instead, the skis treated the creature as though it was a ski jump. Kaimu landed, and the safeties shut off.

  Several meters up the mountain, Michelle knelt in the snow. “You hit an Earther.”

  Impossible. Before he left the Willflower, the tourist board had assured him that the glacier-covered Canadian region wasn’t populated. All the native Earthers were in a temperate band near the equator.

  “Hominid Class 304. Organic component. . .100 percent.” Michelle transmitted her initial assessment to the rest of her collective, pausing briefly upon the discovery that the creature had no upgrades. The rest of her transmission was a stream of numbers relating to the creature’s condition. All Kaimu gleaned from the numbers was that the creature wasn’t dead. Yet. Blood stained its shaggy white coat and seeped into the icy powder. Kaimu stepped off of his skis. Cold seeped through his skisuit and chilled his feet. He trudged up the hill, kicking his toes into the powder.

  “Can you save it?” he asked.

  “Twenty-eight percent. My training is neurosurgery, and I’ve never worked on anything 100 percent organic before.” Michelle’s gaze was locked on the two parallel gashes in the creature’s torso, but most of her mind was elsewhere, searching for the knowledge she needed. To her, this was a problem, a challenge. He wondered if she was enjoying it.

  Michelle turned away, and Kaimu stepped in for a better look at the injured Earther. Despite its blood-matted fur and diminutive stature, it was undeniably human. She, Kaimu realized from the gentle curve of her hips. She was undeniably human. Her fur was downy and short, more silver than white. The coarser, whiter fur that covered much of her body turned out to be clothing, cut from the skin of an animal. He shuddered.

  “You’re in my way.” Michelle nudged him aside. She’d reprogrammed one of her skis to the smallest size, still unwieldy, but small enough to hold in one hand. She drew the sharp edge along the Earther’s outer furs, cutting away the clothing. Unable to see, Kaimu extended sensory tendrils, tapping into Michelle’s visuals and trying to grasp the severity of the injuries.

  “Too distracting,” Michelle informed him. She banished his consciousness into a memory cache.

  In the memory, there are three consciousnesses in Michelle’s body. Michelle, of course, and Jasmine, who isn’t so bad. Elliot, however, Kaimu finds deeply disturbing. Not the man himself, but the idea that Michelle is part male. Or that another man is in his girlfriend’s head. Kaimu tries to tangle himself with only Michelle, but the three are so intertwined he has no choice but to dissolve into all of them.

  Kaimu recognizes the memory. He’s on planetside leave on Nova Terra, and it’s his first time visiting Michelle at work. She’s been easing him into her life. It’s a new experience for her, to share herself without drawing him into her collective. It’s new for him, too.

  Michelle reviews patient data files while she waits for him to arrive. All around her, Hospital617 buzzes with activity. In physical space, the hospital is a cavernous room. One floor, no walls. In headspace, there is more privacy, walls that give the illusion of each patient having a separate room. As part of the staff, Michelle doesn’t bother uploading the headspace sensory inputs. Through her eyes, Kaimu can see the entire floor. Specialists of all sorts hover over their patients. Most of the work is upgrades—body reconstruction and routine anti-mortality treatments.

  Neurosurgery team 8 to 27-12.

  The woman in bed 27-12 is old. Not in the sense that Kaimu is old; his age is from the time dilation caused by his trips between the stars. The woman’s skin is wrinkled and blotchy, and her hair has thinned so he can see the top of her scalp. She is frail, her body is giving out.

  Kaimu sees himself weaving across the hospital floor. He feels his kiss on Michelle’s cheek. Hears himself ask if she’s busy. She tells him yes, but stay anyway. So he does.

  She goes back to the woman. Elliot crowds his way to the foreground with patient information. Noelani Lai. A flood of datapackets swirl around the name: age, medical history, anything that might be relevant to selecting a treatment. Jasmine dilutes herself into the hospital archives, matching Elliot’s patient data to other surgical cases. The mini-collective reconvenes and decides that the woman’s body is inoperable. Insufficient regenerative capabilities. Instead, they will re-wire her organics to allow her consciousness to disengage itself. She can be installed into a new body later, if she so desires.

  Michelle peels away layers of skin and cuts through Noelani’s skull. The tissue beneath is predominantly organic, with traces of ancient wiring. More primitive than Kaimu. As a navigational officer, he’s had to upgrade to interface with the Willflower.

  Michelle blends with Jasmine and Elliot so thoroughly during the surgical procedure that Kaimu can’t find Michelle at all. They become Jasmine/Elliot/Michelle. Jem. As the surgery progresses, the sight and smell of Noelani’s organics become mildly nauseating. The SmartDust that sterilizes the air leaves behind odor-causing particles because sometimes a strange smell can serve as a diagnostic tool.

  Kaimu is relieved when the operation is finished, and he can pick out strands of Michelle again. She doesn’t bother to replace the slice of skull she removed, simply folds the skin back down over the wound.

  Noelani floats out from her organics and into the vast interconnectivity beyond. Unused to such freedom, she loses cohesiveness, still existing, but commingled with the
larger world. Jasmine observes, and notes the response as normal. Twenty-five percent of patients who are absorbed in this way eventually re-cohere. The remainder pursue a less individualized existence. Jem declares the operation a success.

  Michelle—the realtime Michelle on the mountain—has shown him what she wants him to see, but now there is something he wants her to see. Awkwardly, since he isn’t used to manhandling other minds, he takes control of the fractional portion of Michelle that led him here. He binds them to the hospital recording of a young woman. The woman is Noelani’s granddaughter, Amy.

  She hurries through the maze of hallways, filled with an overwhelming sense of worry. Not for Tutu, but for Mom. She remembers Tutu from her childhood, an energetic woman with long black hair who held her hand in Southside Park while they fed energy chips to the mechanical ducks. They’d gone every time Tutu came to visit, from the time she was two until the time Amy decided she was too old for ducks.

  In the pre-op room, Mom is holding Tutu’s hand. Mom’s eyes are swollen and red, but dry. When she sees Amy, fresh tears roll down her face.

  “Tutu,” she says. “Tutu, wake up. Amy is here.”

  Amy puts her hand on Mom’s shoulder, half a hug because Mom can’t turn away from Tutu. “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “She was awake. An hour ago,” Mom says. She pushes gently against Tutu’s shoulder. “Your granddaughter is here. Amy.”

  Amy takes Tutu’s hand. It isn’t the strong hand that she remembers from her childhood. The surgeons wouldn’t fix her body; even Amy could see that Tutu was too old. They would save her by putting her into the collective, and she would be absorbed and lost. Amy can’t bring herself to say her goodbyes out loud. The words would be too final, and her voice would fail her. Instead she squeezes Tutu’s hand and thinks the word, goodbye.