My ancient self giggles.
“Ashey, pause playback.”
Google-Wang Colony spins into view far above. I’d recognize the corporate colors from a billion miles away. I take another quaff of rye, then lay back on the wet grass. Cold moisture soaks into my back. Bank of Zhong Guo Colony winks distantly across the sky, and even though it’s hundreds of miles up I think I can hear it tearing roughly across the Cosmos. I sit here, watching the stars, until New Earth rises, spoiling the glorious night.
I approach my house, plasteel container in one hand, rye in the other. I pour the liquid in the plasteel container into the foyer, and the hydrocarbon smell burns my nostrils.
With a small lighter I set flame to a soaked rag. I toss it into the house. For a moment, the rag burns like a candle, guttering in a bedroom. Shadows dance across my ancient walls like memories. A pang of dread hits me. Is this really what I want?
But it’s too late. The foyer erupts in flame, and I leap back. In seconds the fire roars louder than the frogs ever have. The heat singes my face as the house burns.
And just like that, I destroy the home that my fifteenth generation great-grandmother built four hundred and seventeen years ago.
With the stascreen shut down, the fire corkscrews freely into the sky. A column of smoke arcs away for miles, lit by the light of New Earth. Once, this would have aroused a hundred suppressor-bots into action. Now, what is another fire when all will soon be ash?
My ancient house burns to the ground. It takes a while. So I sit beside the pond. The frogs are quiet, perhaps watching the flames with me. I think of Rachael, and the promise I made to her. And I think of Lin.
At dawn, when the police arrive, the only thing left of the house is a pile of cinders. The air is foul with soot as armed men read me the evac order. They bind me in plasticuffs and escort me off my property. They seat me inside a small craft, and the young man across from me, in bulky police regalia, offers me anti-nausea nano for the trip to space. I was hoping to glimpse my property one last time as we lift off, but there are no windows. This is a prison ship.
***
I paid a hefty fine and was ordered to take “reintegration” classes, then I was set free. The process seemed rote, and I suspect I’m one of thousands. Josef rented me an apartment in his condo for an absurd price, and he and Esther have been inviting me over nightly for dinner as if nothing at all has happened. Rachael calls from time to time to see how I’m fitting in.
When I’m not skipping the reintegration classes or finding excuses not to join Josef and Esther for dinner, I spend my time watching as the Earth gets sliced open like a piece of fruit, as geometric chunks are carved out of its pulpy flesh ten thousand kilometers at a time.
This evening my telescope and datafeeds focus on the Earth’s northern hemisphere.
“It’s time,” Ashey warns. By piggybacking illegally onto satellite proxies, I have real-time access to the Geoengineers’ datanet. On my holoscreen a green light flashes twice, the signal from the Foreman. In Pan Mandarin, translated on my screen, the Foreman says, “EDHL-22, begin the first longitudinal cut at your discretion.”
A full minute’s pause. Then a blinding flash. A molten orange circle of light moves south along the seventieth longitude line for minutes, and even from this distance it’s so bright it leaves spots in my vision. The cutting pauses as the laser’s gyroscopes realign. Then it slices across the fortieth latitude line, just under an emptied New York City.
The laser traces out a great rectangle over the course of an hour. Then the grav-beams tug the huge section out. Like ice cream, the molten core drips toward Earth’s center. By technology I don’t pretend to understand, the layered walls of Earth don’t collapse into the new space, but stay fixed. And the white-hot core, from what I’ve read, is being artificially cooled, eleven-point-five degrees per day.
I wonder if any of the holdouts, like Cordelia or Marta or Dr. Wu or Helen and her kitten, escaped the mandatory evacs. As they slowly floated into the sky, would they think they were flying up to meet God?
Over several hours, lasers break the chunk into hundreds of pieces.
“That one,” Ashey says, highlighting a point in my vision.
The land that was my home is shunted up to Trump-Dominguez Colony. It will be used, the datanet says, as a counter mass so the colony can maintain its highly sought-after earth-forward views. Four and a half billion years, of algae and antelope, of brontosauri and bison, of woolly mammoths and glaciers, of trees and earthworms and amphibious frogs just to become a paperweight so the rich can wake up to their plastic earth.
That night, I dream of frogs screaming.
***
Years pass. Old Earth is gone, every last piece used up.
Today, I sit next to Josef, Esther, and Pim in an amphitheater of thousands. Rachael is graduating from GE Sinopec with a B.S. in Applied Biology. We sit through an endless procession of names. Pim and I converse a bit. His voice has deepened, and he looks more like a man these days. He’s polite, and humors me, but I sense universes between us. I know this world isn’t mine anymore.
After the ceremony, we eat dinner at an expensive restaurant, and the low-g does horrors to my stomach. Rachael, in her graduation gown, has been staring at me the entire meal. “Grandpa,” she says, “will you come with me for a ride after dinner? I’d like to show you something.”
Her mother smiles.
“I’ve had too much to eat. I’m a little tired. Maybe next time?”
Josef glares at me. “Dad,” he says like he’s scolding a child, because that’s what I’ve become to all of them.
I sigh. “What did you want to show me?”
We head outside to Rachel’s lobber, a frighteningly small vessel, and I climb into the passenger seat as eagerly as a man to the gallows. I was never good with zero-g. I try to hide my shakes as we leap off GE Sinopec and dive down to New Earth.
“For my graduation thesis we had to recreate an Old Earth ecosystem,” she says, “as part of the bioprojects to save as much life as we can.” I examine her face in the reflected light of the planet. She is beautiful, my granddaughter. From under her rolled up sleeve I see the glint of a techplant, expressly forbidden by her father. I smile.
“So I chose your backyard,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“Specifically, the lake behind your house, with all the frogs.”
The lobber dips over a deciduous forest, and we descend tens of miles. My stomach feels like I left it back at the university.
“I didn’t tell you,” she says, “because I knew how you were always going on about New Earth.” She holds her breath, and when I say nothing, she says, “and also because I really wasn’t sure if it was going to work.”
“What was going to work?” I say. We swoop over fields of swaying grass, muddy swamps and dense forests.
“Let me show you.”
We set down in a field beside a thick wood. There are deep depressions in the mud, a sign of many previous landings. The sun hangs low on the horizon, and its orange light spills through the trees. She leads me into the woods, down a winding path, pausing to make sure I’m still with her, to warn me of a treacherous branch or root. The air here smells of mulch and earth and abundant life. She smiles, and suddenly it’s like she’s a toddler again, leading me into a field of sunflowers.
And then I hear them.
Frogs. Thousands of them, croaking away with strange voices. We approach a small lake, not too different from the one that was once in my backyard.
“I came by your house when I knew you were away.” She looks apologetically at me. “And I collected, um . . . specimens. They’re not the same frogs, of course,” she says. “They have genes better suited to this particular environment. But they’re direct genetic descendants. Essentially, these are your frogs’ great-grandchildren.”
The sound of their croaking rekindles memories of a thousand summer nights.
“I did it fo
r school, of course,” she says, “but also I did it for you, Grandpa. I remember sitting beside your lake on summer evenings, listening to the frogs. Those times, when we were all together, are some of the happiest I remember. I wanted to bring a little of that here, to New Earth, for you. Now that I’ve got the population stabilized—and a passing grade.” She laughs. “I could finally show you.”
I am flabbergasted. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes.” She waves her hand and a long document arrives in my vision.
“What’s this?”
“A deed,” she says. “I used a few connections at school, and I got a little financial help from Mom and Dad. Well, a lot of help. But I bought this land. And now I’ve transferred the deed to you. These fifteen hectares are yours, Grandpa. It’s my gift.”
I’m stunned. “Rach, it’s beautiful.” I reach to hug her.
She whispers in my ear as she squeezes me, like she used to on summer nights on my porch so long ago, “I thought perhaps you could build a house here.”
The frogs croak. Their sound is different, a little strange. And the trees are arrayed a bit too neatly. This isn’t my Earth. It never will be. But I think of green-haired Lin and her friends, and Pim, and Josef and Esther, and Rachael, all coming to visit.
“Yes,” I say. “A big house, with plenty of room for guests.”
© 2013 Matthew Kressel.
The History Within Us, by Matthew Kressel
On a wrist-mounted computer, Betsy Haadama watched a six thousand-year-old silent film. It was grayscale, overexposed, two-dimensional, and chronologically jumbled. On the film: a mustachioed man doting over his young son at a crowded zoo. A woman vigorously combing the boy's white hair beside a large piano. A family eating a large meal, candles burning on a table, men wearing yarmulkes, bodies shivering in prayer. A river, people swimming, women in white bathing caps and full-body suits. Men on rocks by the shore, pipes in mouths, smoke drifting lazily upward. A park, the boy looking down at a dead pigeon. Staring. Staring. Father picking him up, kissing him. In the sky, a bright sun.
A young sun.
"Pardon my intrusion in this time of ends," a Twirlover said, startling her. The Twirlover's six separate, hovering pink objects — like human knuckles — danced a looping, synchronized pattern in the air. "If it pleases you, will you share with me why you watch that flickering device so incessantly?"
In some parts of the galaxy one could be killed for being human. Betsy wasn't sure if this Eluder Ship was such a place. But death was coming for all soon enough. So why fear it now?
"This is an ancient film of my paternal ancestor," she said defiantly.
Puffs of air beat against her face as the Twirlover spun. "An ancient film? Indeed, such a rare treasure, an artifact of the past! If it pleases you, may we watch a portion together?"
She was about to tell it no, that she'd rather die alone, contemplating what might have been, when the alarm trilled down the cavernous halls of the Eluder Ship. A cold shiver ran down her spine as a cacophony of voices warned in ninety languages simultaneously, "Gravitational collapse imminent, my beloveds! Please take your positions inside your transitional shells!"
Angry rainbows flared across the floor and ozone and ammonia soured the air, warning those who communicated by color or smell. Betsy's mind skipped and stuttered like the ancient film playing on her wrist as a warning to the telepaths skirted the fringes of her consciousness. Still more warnings she could not perceive with her natural senses no doubt flooded the chamber now.
Hundreds of creatures ran or flew or poured inside their transitional shells, strange cocoons fitted to their variform bodies. The Twirlover tumbled away as Betsy closed the cover of her shell. She hugged her knees and shivered as the glass cover sealed her inside with a hiss and a confirmation beep. A lifeboat or a coffin? She'd find out soon enough.
Transitional shells filled the gargantuan chamber of the Eluder Ship like arrays of soldiers preparing for battle, their noses pointed toward the red-giant star looming outside. Maera — "The Daughter Star" — one of the few still-burning stars in the galaxy. It seethed before all, a conflagration as large as a solar system, turning everything the color of blood.
Forty seconds.
This was a pitiful end, but it was this or slow starvation, privation, death. The galaxy had been laid sere. No planets to grow food. No stars to keep warm. It wasn't fair. None of them deserved this. But then she remembered Julio, and what she had done to him at Afsasat.
I left you to die, Julio. And for that I deserve this.
Thirty seconds.
Soon now, Maera's heart would cool by a fraction of a degree, and billions of tons of matter, no longer kept aloft by nuclear winds, would plunge towards its gravitational center at the speed of light. The star would collapse, go nova, and in its tortured heart the universe would tear. A singularity would form, a black hole, and Betsy Haadama and the thousands of others on this Eluder Ship would ride that collapsing wave into another universe. Their matter and energy, transmuted into pure information, would seed a new creation, the World to Come. Their consciousness, over long eons, would push matter into form, coerce dust to life. In some strange new way they would live on, gods reborn further down the corridor of infinity. And they had been doing this forever, would be doing this again and again until the end of time.
Or so the litany went.
The story soothed troubled minds. But the science behind the technology was just a theory. It could be proven only by first-person observation. Any object which crossed a black hole's event horizon could never communicate with the universe again. Just as easily, she might be annihilated forever. To those witnessing from the outside, there would be no difference.
Twenty seconds.
She tried not to peer up at The Daughter, though its ember light corrupted everything with its hellish glow. Instead she watched the film on her wrist: men in fedoras, women in ostentatious hats at an airport, people descending a stairwell from plane to tarmac. A baby hoisted in the air. Smiles. Laughing. Cut to a park. The boy looking down at the dead pigeon, staring. Staring. Father picking him up, patting him on the shoulder. The boy, crying.
Why do you stare at the bird? Betsy thought. What are you thinking?
She looked up at the seething star. So beautiful, terrible, immense. A wonder that such a thing existed. A horn bellowed and Betsy screamed.
"False Alarm! Beloveds, the imminent collapse was a false alarm! Spurious readings caused us to make an erroneous conclusion. We estimate at least six hours before stellar collapse, based on present readings."
The voice announced the message in multiple languages, simulcast with aggressive rainbows, smells, alien sensations.
I'm alive! she thought. I'm still here! It felt exhilarating, for a moment. Then she remembered she'd have to do this again.
Slowly, shells opened and creatures emerged. Betsy scanned the motley lot of them as her cover retracted. A zoo of sentient species escaping from their cages, creatures made of every color, texture, and temperament.
So much life, she thought. Snuffed out by the Horde. Crimes beyond forgiveness. And made all the more vile because the Horde had been the progeny of the human race.
Betsy activated inositol in her bloodstream via thought command in order to suppress her panic/flight response. It soothed her, but only just enough to notice the hairs on the back of her neck rising from an electrostatic charge as the Twirlover returned.
"That was exciting!" it said.
"I wouldn't call it that," Betsy said.
"To be so close to annihilation and then to come back again. It renews the sense of life!"
"Or the dread of living."
"But the dread, if you explore it," the Twirlover said, "reveals the miracle of existence out of nothingness. From out of horror comes life."
The litany again. "Or out of life, horror," she said.
It tumbled quietly for a moment. "Sometimes." It moved closer to inspect
her film. "That's a child of your species, is it not?"
She glanced down at her screen. "No, that's a rhinoceros."
"Ree-Nos-Ur-Us. What a marvel of composition, all those rolling mountains of flesh. Does it still exist?"
"Extinct."
The Twirlover whistled a mournful, descending arpeggio. "Like so much life in the galaxy. Like the once-glorious stars."
The Horde had obliterated stars by the billions. They had wrapped the Milky Way inside a bleak cocoon of transmatter so that nothing, no ship, no signal — not even light — could pass. And then they vanished, leaving the galaxy to rot. Such was the legacy of humanity.
She wondered if the Twirlover would kill her outright if it knew what she was. Death by physical means might be preferable, she thought, to being flash-baked into quantum-entangled gamma rays. Six in one, really.
The film cut to a boy in a crib, bouncing. His mother lifting him, smiling for the camera. The boy laughing.
"That's one of us," she said. "My paternal ancestor." Surprising herself, she felt pride.
"Ah, such wonderful protuberances!"
A wisp of dust coalesced above Betsy's head. Winking diamonds swirled in yellow clouds. An aeroform creature. For a moment she glimpsed her own face of colored sparkles reflected back at her. But the aeroform being soon spiraled away, only to pause a few seconds later before a group of fronded Whidus who turned their mushroom-like eyes in her direction. Maybe they recognized her, knew what she was. Maybe they were plotting her demise.
A second, identical Twirlover approached Betsy and said to the first, "You know, my bonded-one, that we are about to die, do you not?"
"I was about to come back to you, my flesh-bond," the first said. "And tell you about my sharing with this creature."
"Indeed you were. I saw you tumbling towards me with great haste."
"My flesh-bond, just take a good look at her smooth, auburn skin, the fine black threads that emerge from her head, the little valve at her peak where she modulates her words with a bacteria-laden pink muscle! And on her upper-left protuberance, that metal device which flicker-flashes with strange images. She watches it incessantly. She is curious, is she not?"
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 456
